Also things like the Open Specification promise – covering, among others, 38 Web Services standards and on a practical ground enabling interoperability between Microsoft technology and Apache’s Axis web services stack – are not not geared just toward open source, as proven by the existence of implementations distributed under proprietary licenses.

All in all Microsoft’s decision to define and implement an open source strategy did not happen overnight, as all initiatives above mentioned seems to be part of a much bigger picture, bringing Redmond’s giant to increase third parties’ potential. The central management of vertically integrated production stages is increasingly succumbing to the forces of specialization – a recommended reading for all people interested in the subject at large is “The Vanishing Hand: the Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism” – that is especially true for the IT market. The extent of the improvements in the technology of coordination is an extraordinary enabler in this respect, and I believe Microsoft is strongly refocusing on its platform value, making the open source strategy part of such process.

The Microsoft open source strategy is focused on helping customers and partners be successful in today’s heterogeneous technology world.

Let’s see now what customers and partners need to successfully adopt open source software today, and how Microsoft could fit into the picture. First let’s dip into few Open Source Market dimensions and open issues..Open Source Market dimensions.

Besides cost savings and flexibility – that allow companies to customize their IT solutions to fit their specific needs – customers want to avoid lock-in by adopting open source software broadly supported, in order to retain the possibility of changing the provider. Again, open source software selection is key to retain such possibility.

Moreover Medium to large enterprises look for medium to large IT companies, often want to buy indemnification and some form of warranty. How all this match with vendors’ perspectives?

IT vendors want to share R&D costs, but sequential innovation come with a cost related to sharing standards and it requires a symbiotic approach. Super-communities made of many open source applications are the next step, but they involve even more complex dynamics. As a matter of fact few open source products are part of a large number of different stacks, and the reason might well be that partnering and integrating with third-parties products is costly. Doing it with little hope to exclusively appropriate returns from the Commons is a risky bet. Last but not the least a strong brand is really important to open source firms, alliances and M&A are likely the most affordable and yet effective way to brand OS products sharing costs and benefits. It is probably not by casualty that we are seeing open source acquisitions happening, few consortia are forming and some technological clubs targeting vertical markets..Could Microsoft Open Source Strategy help the open source market?

Microsoft business model is a “platform ecosystem” business model: the more developers writing applications for Microsoft platforms, the better. In my understanding by expanding choice for consumers, also on open source applications, Microsoft is giving to more developers and partners a chance to make business together.

This business cycle is somehow reflected by the IDC’s impact model, reporting a ratio of revenue—between 6 and 18 to 1— for local software, hardware, and services firms for every dollar of Microsoft revenue in many countries. While I have no clue how such estimations are accurate, I understand that 5 millions of developers and 750,000 partners around the world are a unique ecosystem. No other IT multinational actor has a similar ecosystem, plus Microsoft differently from IBM or Sun do forego potential direct revenues for hardware sales and consulting services, leaving other space for others’ business.

In the IT ecosystem Microsoft is in the position to enable also open source application and solution providers to deliver value through their tools and components, and it is proactively working on it.

Microsoft’s Hero Hack Pack, is the way Microsoft is addressing developers to provide them with a range of choices for developing and deploying Open Source software on Windows Server 2008 using Visual Studio 2008. CodePlex is where Microsoft hosts open source projects based on Microsoft’s platforms, containing about 1900 applications (150 of them have been developed by Microsoft), counting more than 30,000 users. SourceForge itself counts more than 70,000 open source projects running on Windows. The open source lab at Microsoft Port25, the Shared Source Initiative or the Ajax Control Toolkit worth all a mention as viable resources for tomorrow “open source heroes”.

· JBoss: Claimed 50% deployment on Windows when they signed a partnership deal with Microsoft that included technical collaboration in September 2005..

· SugarCRM: Claimed 35% deployment on Windows when they signed their technical collaboration deal with Microsoft in February 2006..

· Eclipse: Several studies have been done over the past few years show Windows adoption for development and deployment (Dev/Dep):
(80%/60%) [Evans Data Corp., September 2006]
(62%/37%) [Evans Data Corp., September 2007]
(74%/47%) [IDC, Summer 2007]

Microsoft seems to be willing to play a very important role in the open source ecosystem, bringing on the table a strong brand, an impressive number of developers and partners, a specific program for coders and an initiative aimed at ISVs.

3 thoughts on “Open Source at Microsoft: an analysis of Microsoft Open Source Strategy”

Kudos on a detailed and insightful piece…and you’re spot on about Microsoft realizing it’s value as a platform. Interestingly enough, I never bought the claims that Microsoft should have been more “open source friendly” in the past. Multi-national behemoths aren’t “friendly” to anything except what’s profitable and until recently it was profitable to attack open source with FUD and mudslinging. Now that things have changed, we’re seeing Microsoft’s strategy do the same. With that being said, I think Microsoft has more to gain than it does to lose from embracing open source. In light of the fact that its Windows cash cow is facing the prospect of stiff competition on the desktop and server fronts, certified open source stacks will stem the rising tide of migration from Windows to alternatives.

Yes, whatever you say. But never, ever, give full trust to this particular company. It is in their blood, it was their very foundation: dirty agreements, patents & convenants, embrace / extend / extinguish, and other tactics that reveal its effects way after the damage is inevitable.

These “good” news are only scary, just wait and you will surely see that Microsoft is still the same of these 30 years.

Besides FOSS has (and will) never have any need of them to survive and evolve.

Give up on the patents claims, and i will eat my words, until then, you can talk all what you want and open as much “oss” sites as you want. They’re all based on lies.

Oh wait! An open source repository?? but the idea has been implemented previously by someone else…hope that sourceforge will “not sue” them!

About the Editor

Roberto has over 20 years experience in the computer industry, and has spent the last 10 years working in the intersection of open source software and business development. Roberto has taken an active interest in different open source projects and organizations, he also served on some advisory boards, and helped large IT vendors, open source vendors and customers to design and deploy their open source strategies. He works at SourceForge, and opinions expressed here don't necessarily represent employer's positions, strategies, or opinion.